Sunday, February 7, 2010

It's the time of year, when a certain nation assembles in front of big-screen TV's in homes and bars, in order to drink cheap beer and eat Doritos and chicken wings, to watch a 6-hour spectacle, where half of the time is spent on something called "Pre-Game show". It's the same time of year where it is OK to fall asleep on someone's sofa before sunset; and the same time when 40-year old's use the half-time break to throw a football in the backyard like 50 pounds and 20 years earlier, and when 20 minutes later, people arrive at the ER, hyper-ventilating, with torn ACL's because they went "deep".
During this hour-long spectacle, millions of dollars are spent on silly commercials mostly featuring geckos and watery substances, and men in suits and ties attempt to analyze each move in the game to the tiniest detail ("The torn shoe laces cost them the game"). The actual game technically only lasts 60 minutes, but it is stretched out over like three to four hours due to insertion of replays from eight different angles, players shown walking around unbuckling their helmets, slow-motion of players getting whacked, more commercials, and due to "I'm tired, I've been on the field for 48 seconds" breaks or timeouts in order to discuss dinner plans. Actual plays only last about 5 1/2 seconds, when players dribble around trying to confuse the opponent, while one guy tries to throw an oval ball to one of his team mates, without getting overrun by 350-pound humans wearing 35 pounds of padding and kitchen towels at their hip. A play ends when someone gets buried under four to five bodies of the opposing team, or fails to catch the ball (try round balls for a change!). The game usually ends with a bunch of people emptying a large water dispenser filled with Gatorade over some poor dude with giant headphones. Not sure why they don't show the Super Bowl on the Comedy Channel.

Anyway, my expectation today was that roads are deserted as usual on Sundays like this. For some odd reason though, it was pretty busy on the roads, either due to people having forgotten that Super Bowl is today, or that people were running late buying last minute essentials (read: cheap beer). The weather was not as sunny as the weatherman said, so while I was happy with the exercise, I wasn't with the cool wind and dark clouds today; even Mount Diablo didn't look inviting, and a fellow cyclist said that is was freezing coming down. For me, 35 miles, with the mandatory stop at Peets. Now, time for a nap.